bettas with ....

I think Ill try this tomorrow when I have the day off from work. Im going to put the females in with the discus and see what happens. I do plan on keeping the 20 long set up the way I have it now just incase I have to move them back. Like I said my females are not aggressive with each other and they do play in the fake plants I have. My discus are not aggressive (well as much as a cichlid can be) they play with each other, swimming through bubbles of my air stone. I hope this works out.
 
Yeah-let us know :). My experience with putting in a male betta with other fish was that it was non-aggressive for the first week, and then started nipping and striking :(. However this seems as if it has a good chance of working out!
 
day one and so far so good with the move! the discus do not bother the bettas. I changed the water before I moved them. When I changed the water one of my fake plants came loose and is now floating at the top and the betta girls are playing in it. I think this will be a good move!
 
I keep live plants floating. The betta females love to sleep and play in them. Today I found one asleep in there and thought she passed away. We both jumped when I touched her. Then she went ballistic when she realized she was missing breakfast :^)
BTW I keep more than one sp of betta female in the same tank. No issues.
 
Yes, definitely keep a divider between males! they will fight until one is dead, no matter how big the tank, since the "loser" does not have room to run away as in the wild. and make sure your divider has no gaps on the bottom, sides, or top (it needs to butt up against the underside of the plexiglass that is under your light - install a top barrier of this sort if you don't have one already, since they could jump the divider). you will notice the boys trying to "tear down" the divider to get to each other, at least for the first few days. would be best to get a divider made of plexiglass, plastic, or glass, with lots of water flow slits in it since the mesh style dividers pose a hazard in the male betta trying to bite through it and possibly hurting or snagging his mouth/teeth. some people have said that a color tinted divider works best since it doesn't allow the fish a super clear view of his neighbor and keeps them from getting too stressed until they get used to the new "boy next door" (flaring continuously is very stressful for males).

Also to note that you may want to put a sponge filter (thats what i use) on each side of the divider. if you have only one filter, the fish on the same side of divider as the filter will get better water quality than the fish on the non filtered side. one heater should be enough as long as you put it as close to the divider as possible.

Same as briggadane, i keep two female bettas of different species (one veiltail and one crowntail) in a 10gal together, with no issues yet after a week, in fact they sleep near each other (keeping fingers crossed - had to remove the third female yesterday, they were both picking on her). Like all are saying, be on standby with the net! .... ever yell at your fish? "stop that! leave her alone!" lmao

My males are housed side by side in seperate tanks right now, so when i go to divide my 20 gal for them i hope to not have too much of a time getting them to settle down.

Feel free to PM me for any info needed on bettas. I'll admit I am far from being an expert, but the info i've gathered thus far is enough to keep all my fish happy and healthy (knock on wood) since the day i got the first one and now i'm up to six in less than six months, with hopes to begin breeding soon.
 
One thing i forgot to mention above is the fact that if one of the males in a divided tank gets sick, the other will most likely get sick too, since the water flows from one side to the other. the only way to bystep this is to put in a completely sealed divider (glass panel siliconed to bottom and sides of tank). some aquarium shops will do this for you if you don't have sufficient knowledge to do it yourself. This essentially turns one tank into two, and you will definitely need two filters and two heaters.

One thing to worry about using the sealed divider is that water changes get a little tricky. I've heard of these sealed dividers breaking because somebody did a water change of 30% or more on one side and didn't do the same at the same time to the other side. I think the pressure differences on the divider caused the breakage. so if you are doing say, a 40% change on side A, you have to do the same % on side B at the same time.

Anybody out there that knows otherwise on the above, please input!
 
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It is, and always will be, a gamble with Betta Splendens.
I currently have 12 adults and God only knows how many fry (was pure chance I noticed the male eating them)
B.Splendens all have personalities of their own, as we've all seen at some stage. It's purely a matter of finding out who can go with who and with what.
All 5 of my females can be kept with other fish such as Angels, Kribs and Cories (the 3 older ones all looked at the Krib and went "Hmm that's no angelfish") Tried guppies, found out they like sushi.

Personalities meaning everything when keeping B.Splendens together and with other fish. You place an aggressive female with a non-aggressive female, you'll have trouble. If possible, place 3 or more in the tank, just to make sure no one gets overly bullied.
I honestly have lil idea on Discus. I just know that they're a tough fish to take care of and require close attention.

As for divided tanks, they'll only break if the glass isn't thick enough.
 
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I dont know what type of bettas I have. Let me post some pics. Ok these are pics that I took before I found out that bettas need to live in tanks and not a vase. These bettas now live tanks!
Red.jpg

randolph2-2-08.jpg

Thegirls.jpg

These are old pics and the bettas are fatter and do not look malnurished
 
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